September 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
299 
it all over them so close that if it were possible for 
other pollen to reach the stigma it could get no access 
to the proper parts. 
The word campanula means little bells, being the 
diminutive of campanum, an old obsolete Latin name 
for a hell. But what is the meaning of diminutive 
itself? asked a friend the other day. Why, a “ short 
cut,” to be sure, was the reply, which we all use more 
or less. Jack, Johnny, Fred, Ned, Will, Bill, Ben, 
and Bob, are all diminutives or short cuts for well 
known names ; and, to turn from little bells to great 
ones, we have campanology as the name of that noisy 
game called “ ringing the bells or chimes,” which is 
as familiar and grateful to English ears as the screecli- 
ings of the bagpipes are to the highlander. 
D. Beaton. 
HOTHOUSE DEPARTMENT. 
Thunbergia. —As a sequel to the paper of last 
week we shall now allude shortly to this beautiful 
family of climbers, which, when well grown, are very 
ornamental alike to the stove and the conservatory 
during summer and autumn, and which require very 
little more attention than a balsam to manage, if a 
few points of no difficulty aro attended to. One of 
these points is the giving them a slight degree of 
shade from bright sunshine after they have passed 
their young state. The genus received its name in 
honour of 0. P. Thunberg, a celebrated traveller and 
botanist. It belongs to the fourteenth class and 
second order of the Linnsean system, and the natu¬ 
ral order Acanthacese. All the species are natives 
of warm latitudes, coming from the East Indies, 
Madagascar, Sierra Leone, and Trinidad. They are 
all tubular and monopetalous in their blossom or 
corolla, but in its appearance there is considerable 
difference in the various species; the coccinca being 
inclined to be ringent, or somewhat like the snap¬ 
dragon family; the grandifiora is foxglove-shaped, 
or resembling closely a large flower of the largest 
gloxinia; while the others, such as chrysops and 
alata, and its allied species and varieties, are salver- 
shaped, that is, having a long slender tube, while the 
upper part, or what is termed the limb of the corolla, 
is expanded into a flat surface—like a round dish or 
salver—of live segments, such as we lately saw to be 
the case in the tender species of the vinca, and which 
may easily be seen in the flower of a phlox. The 
beauty of the vinca chiefly consisted in the contrast 
exhibited between the segments of the corolla and 
the different coloured ring that surrounded the 
pinhole-opening that terminated the tube, but in 
those salver-sliaped Tliunbergias the chief beauty 
consists in the contrast between the colour of the 
expanded segments and the throat of the tube itself, 
which is generally from two-eighths to three-eighths 
of an inch in diameter; the width across the seg¬ 
ments being from two to two and a half inches. I 
may also mention that the width of the tube at its 
termination is owing to a swelling out that gives it 
somewhat of a funnel-shaped appearance. There 
are a few points more in a botanical point of view 
to which wo shall merely advert. Before the expan¬ 
sion of the flower you will perceive that it is shut up 
between two green leaves that act as a sheath. At 
first sight you would imagine that that greenish 
covering was the calyx, or outer protection of the 
flower; but it is not so. If you turn them down 
you will see that the base of the tube is surrounded 
by a number of short thread-like substances in a 
whorl-like manner, each of these thready substances 
being a sepal or division of the true calyx. The two 
leaves that enclosed the flowers are termed bracts —a 
term given by botanists to those leaves from the axils 
of which flowers are produced, and to those leaves pro¬ 
duced upon the peduncle or footstalk of the flower, as 
in the present case. Such leaves are always different 
in size, and frequently in outline and colour, from 
the general leaves of the plant. Whatever be the 
size and colour of those appendages that intervene 
between the true leaves of the plant and the calyx of 
the flower, they are termed bracts. As flowers are 
our object, we shall not advert to the horny-seeds 
farther than to say they are worth examining; but 
before parting with the flower we would wish you to 
get inside of the tube, and mark not only its own 
beauty but the beauty of what it encloses. There 
are the singular and pretty fringed anthers of the 
stamens; in some, as in the fragrans, there is the 
little open bowl, terminating as a stigma the slender 
style of the pistil; in alata and its congeners the 
terminating bowl is not a fourth of the size it is in 
fragrans, but the style (nearly an inch in length, 
and very slender) is bent at rather better than an 
eighth of an inch from its point, so as to lean over 
the anthers of the stamens. At this bent part, and 
leaning in a similar manner, is another bowl-like 
protuberance, three times the size of the terminating 
one, and resembling the half of a beautiful bivalved 
shell, fit, by its elegance, for a mermaid, or one of 
Neptune’s ancient naiads. The extreme delicacy 
and fineness of the finish of these various parts will 
well repay your inspection. It is a striking fact, but 
no less true, that the more minutely we examine the 
works of man the more do roughness and incongrui¬ 
ties appear; while the more we examine the works 
of the Almighty the more perfection and beauty we 
behold—roughness and unevenness never being de¬ 
tected, even by the finest microscopes, without an 
end and reason existing for them. It was not with¬ 
out a purpose that the most splendid embodiment of 
wisdom that earth will ever witness enforced the 
proposition, conveying in itself a command and a 
privilege, “ Consider the lilies and flowers of tho 
field ;” for there is small hope of that man or 
woman progressing in that which is kindly, humane, 
or generously sympathetic, who can examine the 
structure of a flower, evidencing as it does not merely 
the power but the beneficence and goodness of tho 
Deity, and yet can remain unimpressed amid the les¬ 
sons it so forcibly teaches. What purpose, then, does 
this shell-like protuberance answer ? I think that it 
collects and transmits tho fertilizing pollen as well 
as the little bowl at tho termination of the pistil. 
And what are your reasons? I have cut oft’ the point 
of the pistil, and left this shell-like protuberance, 
before the pollen boxes of the anthers had opened, 
and fertile seeds were produced. I have removed the 
shell-like bowl, and left the small one at the point, 
and a similar result took place. But now 1 am, 
nevertheless, in a fix, for in removing both of these 
apparent stigmas, in one case at least, by a liberal 
dusting of pollen over the severed style, I obtained 
seeds. A stray grain or tube of pollen may have 
effected fecundation before I took the common 
means to prevent it; but, as it was, the event rather 
puzzled me. In many cases there is scarcely such a 
thing as a style to the pistil, but the stigma is close 
to the germen. Is it impossible for fecundation to 
take place when the pistil has no stigma? Older 
and wiser heads than mine must determine. Plants 
in many cases aro wonderfully accommodating, suiting 
